


You Remind Me of the Babe

by cashi



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Eventual Romance, F/M, Happy Ending, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashi/pseuds/cashi
Summary: Sarah regained some confidence, her earlier fear burning slowly into anger."No, seriously. Why the hell are you here."Jareth reached across the table and snagged her notebook, scanning the page with feigned boredom."I've come to take you away."Its Sarah's second shot at the Labyrinth--only this time it's herself she has to save.DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot do not belong to me. The creator of Labyrinth is in no way associated with this story. No copyright infringement is intended.





	

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife..."  
Sarah dropped her head onto the table, raised it, and dropped it again, smacking her forehead onto the cool plastic.  
"Stupid, useless brain," she grumbled, expelling a deep sigh of discontentment. She had no idea how she was to go about this assignment. What had possessed her to take the Creative Writing course offered by her college in her third year? The stage was her calling, her talent for drama and her flair for the theatrical a boon to her profession. Vaguely, Sarah recalled thinking to herself that she might like to write her own plays in the future and what a good idea would it be to have a creative writing course for experience under her belt. But fanfiction? How would fanfiction teach her to write scintillating productions that moved her audience from tears of laughter to tears of deepest sadness?  


Her idea had been to rewrite the plot line of Pride and Prejudice, but base the alternate universe off of a dream she once had, so long ago.  


A dream…  


_Opulent chandeliers dripping crystals that glimmered like shooting stars, swathes of silk and chiffon in all colours of the pastel rainbow, ropes of creamy pearls around elegant necks and dusty, rose gold earrings winking with jewels. Hideous and strange yet beautiful masks peeking out between the rushing, whirling bodies of skilled dancers, the luxurious laughter of the drunk and careless, the mesmerizing music.....and a figure, following her, seeking her, always there at the corner of her eye…_  


Sarah shook herself. Not a dream. A Nightmare, one she relived every so often at night in her deep slumber and that frightened her awake, soaked in sweat and haunted. What a world her mind had created, one fraught with dwarves and monsters and things that were never what they seemed to be. Her stepmother used to tease her about her "imaginary friends" that she had collected from her vivid dream--nightmare--about the labyrinth in an attempt to connect with her. "Sarah, have you seen my emerald brooch? Hoggle didn't take it again, did he?" In the end, Sarah believed that Irene had just been desperate to be a family and decided that accepting her as a stepmother would not be a betrayal to her birth mother. Besides, her father deserved to be happy and she adored her half-brother, Toby. Which was strange, because Sarah remembered hating him at some point in her life. When had that changed?  


The grandfather clock in the main hall chimed, reminding Sarah that her paper was not going to write itself. She groaned and picked up her pen, forcing herself to start writing with the hope that eventually the ball would start rolling and she'd get into the rhythm of the story. "However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a realm of goblins, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding royal families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their heiresses." A goblin king. Why the king of goblins, of all things? Why not the king of...of elves? Not the little green wood folk that drank milk left out on window sills, but the kind from Tolkien's books? What had her brain been up to that it had conjured such a detailed and creative notion as a king of goblins being in love with her?  


Sarah's mind began to wander but she caught herself and snapped back to attention, wrestling with her paper 'til the last rosy light began to bleed from the sky.  


At about nine in the evening, Sarah had managed to write out two back-to-back pages of her fanfiction assignment into her spiral bound notebook and was beginning to wonder where her parents and half-brother were and when they would be back. There had been no note in the kitchen indicating that they would be back late from wherever they were, nothing hanging on a cupboard in Irene's looping script telling Sarah that there was chicken pasta in the fridge should she get hungry.  


Sarah rose from where she sat at the kitchen table by the window and opened the fridge anyways just to be absolutely sure that there wasn't a saran wrapped dish of something for her. Nope. Nothing. She rocked back on her heels and closed the door. She was bored, tired, and hungry and growing increasingly frustrated with her writing assignment. Four hours and all she had to account for it were two measly pages? And her handwriting was big, too. Sarah took a breath, lowered her expectations, and opened the fridge again to see what else there was to eat. Irene obviously hadn't gone grocery shopping yet, as the fridge was practically empty. Sarah slammed the door shut disgustedly, turning away to scour the cupboards where she found options that were equally as unappealing to her.  


"It's not fair," she muttered, then checked herself. Someone had once told her that she took too much for granted--though who that someone was she couldn't be bothered to remember. She sat down at the table once again and picked up her pen, then put it down. Picked it up. Put it down again. She was completely at a loss as to how to continue. Distantly she tried to remember how her dream--nightmare--had begun. Toby had been crying, she'd been...upset by something. She'd picked him up and said...what had she said?  


"I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now." Sarah blew out a breath as she remembered, thinking how silly she had been and how childishly dramatic. Well, Toby wasn't here, so there was no chance of him getting whisked away by goblins. She huffed out an exasperated laugh, turning a sardonic look to the blank page of her notebook. “I wish the goblins would come and take me away right now."  


The lights went out.  


Sarah shot straight up in surprise, gripping the table for support.  


"A power outage?" She asked no one in particular.  


She took a moment to be perfectly still and collect herself, her sudden startlement melting into nervous laughter at her own wild imagination.  


"What timing."  


Sarah's eyes adjusted to the watery light filtering through the kitchen windows and she began to slowly creep her way over to the utility drawer where she knew her father kept a flashlight. A shattering sound echoed down the hallway to her left and panic seized her by the throat.  


"Merlin?" She whispered, blood thrumming in her ears. She prayed it was only her dog. It's just a power outage, Sarah, get a grip. She tried to laugh at herself, but the sound got stuck in her chest. 'It's just a power outage' was always what the dumb girl in horror films said right before she was brutally murdered. With that thought, Sarah threw caution to the wind and lunged for the utility drawer, wrenching it open and fumbling frantically for the red flashlight. Her fingers closed around it in the dark and she whipped around, flicking it on. A weak circle of cold light skimmed around the kitchen, exposing the seat she had vacated at the table and reflecting blindingly off the window. Nothing. Sarah sagged against the wall, her heart running a marathon in her chest. She raised two fingers to her neck to check her pulse.  


"God, you are such a baby. Okay, candles. Candles are in the dining room."  


The journey to the dining room took a couple of years off of Sarah's life, as every slight noise from the radiator on the far wall, every creak of the house or ping! of the pipes set her teeth on edge. Merlin remained M.I.A. and Sarah still didn't know what had caused the shattering sound back near the kitchen. She reached the cabinet containing the spare tapered dining table candles and took out a fistful, also grabbing the big plastic bag of tea lights. Matches were by the fireplace. Sarah crept to the tastefully decorated living room and felt around the mantelpiece until she found the box of Redbird matches, then meticulously began to light each candle and place them around the room. Slowly but surely, the darkness began to dissipate and with each new corner of the room illuminated, Sarah's mood began to lift.  


A flash of cold, blue light behind Sarah startled her and she wheeled around, stumbling backwards into her father's favourite green armchair. Rain began to hit the windows in a growing onslaught, and the sky blackened further. Sarah felt laughter bubble in her chest, verging on the hysterical. A thunderstorm--no wonder the power had gone out; and here was she, sprawled in her father's chair, imagining goblins hiding in the fireplace. And the shattering in the front hall must have been Merlin having found his way through the door from the garage and now lying on his bed, too lazy to come to her aid. The sky cracked and rain poured down the window in rivulets, the sound all too comforting to Sarah, whose nerves were by now completely frazzled. Better go clean up whatever broke, Sarah thought to herself, heaving out of the chair and swiping her long hair away from her face. Grabbing the flashlight, the box of matches, and some tealights, she made her way back through the dining room into the kitchen, setting down lit candles along the way. The hall where the sudden noise had come from was dark and quiet and when Sarah shone her flashlight down it, nothing seemed amiss at first. She stepped forwards and there, half under the console table was one of Irene's beautiful little porcelain figurines of dancing women. The one that had fallen Irene had once mused reminded her of Sarah and now its tiny, cracked and broken face peered up at her forlornly from where it lay, legs nothing but powder. It wouldn't be dancing anymore. Sarah bent down to the scene of the crime and carefully picked up its delicate head, sighing inwardly. Explaining this one to her parents was going to be tricky. Technically she hadn't broken it, but it had been broken under her watch. Somehow, she didn't think "it just magically fell off the table, I swear!" was going to fly. She made a move to stand, but the faintest sparkle caught her eye. Here and there--and on the console, was that...glitter?  


_What on earth is glitter doing--_  


Sarah shot upright and scrambled back into the kitchen, thunder cracking all around the house as the storm outside raged on. She tried the light switch again out of sheer desperation but to no avail--she remained in the darkness tempered only by the dim, pathetic light of the candles.  


"Chill out for a sec, Sarah," she breathed. Her brain was frantic, putting two and two together. Glitter in the hallway. Glitter all over the Labyrinth…  


"It was just a dumb dream, okay? Just a dumb nightmare."  


Yet a part of her, buried down, way deep down almost wished it wasn't. A girl thirsting for magic and adventure and stuck in such a mundane world, suddenly thrust into a mystical land where even faeries were real? Did she dare hope it wasn't just a dream? Maybe she hadn't repressed her memory of the Labyrinth all those years ago because she hadn't believed it--maybe she'd been determined to believe it all a dream lest she suffer the heartbreak of finding out none of it was real. Maybe she forgot to protect herself from disappointment. Maybe she wanted the Labyrinth to be real.  


Her notebook was gone.  


It took Sarah a few moments to notice but when she did she sank down to the floor, hair sliding against the wall. Rain pounded down on the roof of the house and as Sarah sat there alone on the floor, the candles she had lit began to go out, one by one. In their place, pale moonlight speared through the roiling clouds and illuminated the kitchen with waxing silver light. Sarah's breath hitched in her throat and she held it, for what she wasn't sure. Something scuttled through the dining room and more candles went out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a dark blur peek out from the doorway on the far wall. Sarah didn't move. A drawer slammed in the foyer. Stifled, tinny laughter echoed from the living room.  


_Oh God, this isn't happening…_  


Just as Sarah could bare it no longer, a knock came on the kitchen door, the one that lead to her family's moderately sized backyard. She froze, something like relief beginning to break over her. It was probably her parents, back from wherever they were, having forgotten their keys and seeing if Sarah was nearby to let them in; never mind that it would be strange for both her father and stepmother to lose theirs keys. Never mind the fact that they would have knocked on the front door, or that her father would have called out to her to let her know it was him. Seconds ticked by as Sarah argued with herself over the possibility of it being her parents and it being a murderer. _Or a monster_. But things weren't always as they seemed, or so she had learned  


The knock came again, harder.  


Her legs acted of their own accord, pushing her up and carrying her shakily over to the back door. Through the gauzy yellow curtain covering the window she could barely make out a tall figure, decidedly male. Her fingers closed around the door handle, all reason screaming at her that this was the worst possible idea. She opened the door.  


♦◇♦◇♦  


"Aren't you going to invite me in?"  


Years. _Years_ she had seen him in her dreams, _years_ he had haunted her and now after all this time he stood upon the stoop of her back door, holding an umbrella and quirking an eyebrow at her.  


"It is very wet out here."  


Sarah stepped back, leaving enough room for the Goblin King to shake out his umbrella and move into the space beside her, filling the doorway. She backed up across the kitchen until the counter prevented her from moving further away. Jareth folded up his umbrella and leaned it against the wall, then brushed off his shoulders where little droplets of rain had dared to splash him. He turned his attention to her.  


It was like he hadn't aged a day, like mere moments had passed in the realm of goblins between when she had defeated him and where he stood now with his icy blond hair, styled probably by a magical blender, and mismatched eyes. He wore a navy blue velvet jacket, darted at the back and the waist, fastened over with two columns of shiny black buttons and accented with black lapels. His breeches were dark grey and his crème-coloured hunting boots rose just a little over his knees. He reached out to her with a leather glove the same colour as his boots.  


"In the human realm, I have learned, it is custom to greet someone with a 'handshake'."  


Sarah didn't move a muscle, just stayed where she as and watched him warily. The amused smirk on his face twitched, like it was a mask held there by a loose, flimsical bit of string.  


"Defying me again, Sarah? And so soon."  


She slanted her chin, and peered down her nose at him.  


"Why are you here." She didn't punctuate her sentence with a question, just let the statement fall flatly into the space between them.  


Jareth laughed at her, seeming to relax, and pulled a chair out from the table, turning it around and sitting on it backwards, forearms resting over top of it.  


Sarah regained some confidence, her earlier fear burning slowly into anger.  


"No, seriously. Why the hell are you here."  


Jareth reached across the table and snagged her notebook, scanning the page with feigned boredom.  


"I've come to take you away."  


Sarah's heart stopped in her chest, then started with vigor. She strode forwards and snatched the notebook out of his hands. He glanced up into her face, one eye green with the pupil blown out, the other icy blue and shockingly cold.  


A goblin jumped up onto the counter behind her and plunkered down into the sink, amusing itself by turning the faucet on and off.  


"You can't take me away."  


"Oh, but I can. You asked me to."  


Of course she had.  


"I didn't meant to--I didn't actually think you would show up at my door!"  


Jareth rose with cat-like grace and breezed to the sink, picking up the goblin by the back of its tunic and tossing it down the same hallway where the mess of Irene's dancing doll still lay. He brushed his hands together.  


"I made you an offer once, Sarah, for all your dreams to come true. I offered you everything," even myself, he didn't say, "and you threw it back in my face. All for what? A bratty little baby that you didn't even like."  


"That's not true!" Sarah cried. "I love Toby!"  


"But you didn't then."  


The Goblin King faced her, twisting his wrist in the air and conjuring a crystal ball out of nothing.  


"Don't you want to see your friends again, Sarah?"  


In the crystal, images began to ripple, then sharpen. Ludo...Hoggle...Sir Didymus...I'd half forgotten them, Sarah reflected. A flash of a great, hairy beast, all tawny and red with curling horns sat heavily against a dusty stone wall that looked suspiciously like the ones in the gardens she had originally found him in.  


"Oh, Ludo..." Sarah whispered.  


Jareth flung the crystal into the air and caught it on the back of one hand, rolling it over his elbow and up onto his shoulder where he bumped it into the other hand.  


Sarah braced herself on the chair Jareth had vacated, hardly believing this was happening.  


"Last time... last time you came in through the window. Why did you knock on the door this time?"  


One side of Jareth's mouth pulled upwards. "Apparently, coming in through the window is not a customary method of entry for you humans. I have since learned that it is polite to knock on the door."  


"The front door, not the back door."  


Jareth's brow furrowed. "There's a difference?" He shook his head. "Well, that hardly matters now."  


He reached a hand out for her again, the candles around the kitchen suddenly flaring to life.  


"Come, Sarah. It's time to go."  


Lightning blazed around the kitchen again, and the orange glow of the flames accentuated every shadow in his face. His eyes looked black.  


Sarah made a break for it, knocking over the chair and slamming into the back door. She fumbled with the doorknob, a wild scream bursting out of her lungs.  


Hands clasped her shoulders in an iron grip and spun her around.  


Jareth's uneven gaze filled her vision and Sarah threw up her hands, closing her eyes at the last possible second.  


A warm wind buffeted her face and the ground beneath her shifted precariously. The smell of sunshine and dry dirt filled her nose and slowly Sarah cracked her eyes open, blinking into the blinding yellow light.  


Out on the horizon, rising vast and endless and hopeless, loomed the Labyrinth.  


She was back.


End file.
